


Bluff

by Kyramisu



Category: Left 4 Dead 2
Genre: Chapters go by people, Drabble, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 07:23:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6793225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyramisu/pseuds/Kyramisu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick has two rules: don't trust anyone, and look out for number one.</p><p>These don't hold up in the midst of calamity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bluff

**Author's Note:**

> This is planning to be an introspection examining Nick's progress of relationships with all of the survivors, and if all goes according to plan, there'll be some Nellis as well; tbh I spent a lot of time listening to The Wanderer by Dion & The Belmonts while writing this, haha. Hope you enjoy!

Nick has two rules: don’t trust anyone, and look out for number one.

His talents include swindling, crime, and pleasing the occasional floozy; he’s conniving and sly, a fox in a henhouse. His rings glitter like gold in the low light of poker tables, smiling lazy and smug when everyone throws down their hands and groan in response to his royal flush. White suit, blue shirt, all expensive - “Three thousand dollars, honey, and don’t you forget it,” he says to a whore with a glass of wine on his lap - Nick looks a man in his element when doing something shady.

Nicolas is a snake, venomous and patient. He knows the price of being alone, but he makes it work; he lives his own life and loads his own deck. If luck be a lady, Nick has her hooked, line and sinker.

He's been on his own ever since he started sweeping games of pool and poker tables, being eyed with distrust and only allowing a cocky smirk to slip through his mask. Nick looks like he knows secrets others aren't in on yet, and if they're going to know, it's only because he allows it. He's a shark, through and through, and the smallest drop of blood in the waves is enough to send him into a frenzy. Others are right to distrust him; he's a prick, he's scum, and he's unrepentant. Nick's fine with that, because failed marriages and endless run-ins with the law tend to freeze what little he has left in his heart.

So working together, even in the midst of what seems to be literally all hell breaking loose, breaks all of his rules. Trust? Nick’s never heard of it, ever since skipping town on his run-down trailer-park family at the ripe age of eighteen, willing to make a new name for himself with quickly-depleted optimism - working together with complete strangers makes his lip curl, makes his skin crawl. “I ain’t stickin’ around long,” he spits in a hazy smoke-filled elevator, glancing around like the girl named Rochelle’s apt to put a knife in his back, or like the hick’s gonna use that pistol to put a round in his head.

It happens; the most unassuming people tend to be predators, Nick’s learned. There are more cases than he can count where a kid’s been sent to do the knocking on death’s door for some unfortunate guest.

Still - it’s safer, he supposes, for the sake of his own ass to stick together, at least for now. He’ll see what CEDA has up its sleeve, if they’ve got their shit together as much as anyone says. Nick doesn’t believe it; he knows bluffs as well as he knows himself, because that’s what his personality is made up of, and this organization sounds fake as hell. It takes one glance around the shithole Savannah’s becoming to confirm that.

So, stay together, but he’s gonna split as soon as the opportunity to get the hell out of dodge arises.


End file.
